This way in which the personality
of people and their allegiances, their fixed
things in the right mood of compassion
seem to disappear and to fade and be reformed again.
So that the individual person seems
to be no more fix than a cloud of smoke.
The more you love, the more you are
aware of the person you love.
And therefore, the more you are aware
of their eventual disappearance, the more you're aware of them
as a physical being.
The more you're aware of the disappearance
of that physical being.
Here's a poem in which admiring and loving this woman.
Everything she does, nevertheless
seems to suggest her eventual disappearance.
And this increases my love.
I call the poem, "She Ghosts."
Not she ghosts that is female ghosts, but as an active verb.
She causes things to ghost, she ghosts things.
And she begins by smoking her cigarette.
"She ghosts that firm white cigarette in sips.
The dress fades over her throat in puffs of tulle.
She thrusts the window wide.
Earth turns into the predawn light.
From the chimney stacks the white smoke ghosts
begin rooted and running.
An ashtray falls to the floor with a ring.
Spits gray ashes erasing in the breeze.
Her Martini Shivers sobs spirit up the sides in rings.
She thrusts her eyes wide into the chill,
with tears the white breath ghost goes rooted and running.
The parties smokes fade in chill.
I cross and pull the window close,
take her warmth into my own for the white breath ghosts.
Since we are not dawn spiraling into the air,
nor Earth in her dew sweat, nor fevered grass rooted
and running yet."